Pop As Research

When I started on my journey as an academic - studying music and musicology in a university department with a heavy focus on what we might call 'classical music' - I kept my performing world separate. By day I read and wrote about Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, by night I wrote and performed what might be considered new- or alt-folk songs at gigs in dark cellars and bars around Glasgow. But I didn't read or write about new-folk. Rightly or wrongly, at the time, I didn't consider writing or performing popular music to be part of my developing research tool kit....